If Romeo and Juliet had survived past their honeymoon, do you think their marrige would have lasted?
On one hand, Romeo’s approach to love is pretty shallow. At the beginning of the play, he’s moping around, pining away because Roseline had rejected him. Then, within 24 hours, he sees Juliet, and suddenly, he completely forgets the previous love of his life. Poor Rosie is never mentioned again. I can just see him running away with some cutie he met in the marketplace, after he grows bored with Juliet.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of character development in the play. There’s a basis for saying that Romeo matures a bit by the end.
On yet another hand (that makes three hands; I’ll have to borrow one of yours), we’re still talking about two hormonal teenagers. People that age tend to fall in and out of lust with incredible speed. One day it’s True Love[sup]TM[/sup], the next it’s “What did I ever see in that creep?”
Your thoughts?
It would have lasted but transformed into one of those loveless marriages that linger for the rest of their lives. Romeo starts sleeping around before he’s married for two years while Juliet rapidly becomes bitter and disillusioned. They stop talking and every time they’re around each other they fight. Juliet starts a cycle of constantly being pregnant but with the third pregnancy Romeo realizes the child isn’t his which makes things worse. They live to old age constantly wishing they hadn’t.
If they hadn’t died, would their families have reconciled? If not, would the kids be disowned? Romeo was wanted for murder, was he not?
It was probably all downhill from there for those kids anyway. I think the romance would have died pretty quick once they’re penniless, but they’re married, and you were more or less stuck with each other after marriage. So I think they would have stayed together in a loveless marriage while Romeo had a few illegitimate kids on the side.
I think the “forbiddenness” made it even more attractive to them. IIRC, at the beginning of the play, one or two of the characters were talking about how they thought the Montague-Capulet rivalry was winding down. If they could have stayed away from a couple hotheads and had some time to just be together and deal with the other’s idiosyncratic behaviors, etc., I suspect the bloom would have come off the rose (so to speak).
Since divorce was pretty much unheard of in medieval Italy, probably.
Or, the marriage would have been annulled by Lady Capulet when she ran for Official Concubine of the Holy Roman Emperor, and Romeo would have ended up on the medieval Italian talk show “Tiber Banks” talking about how “she knew we were doing it” and "and “Now Juliet acts all grumpy, she’ll let me see the baby but I can’t take him out or nothin’”, while Lady Capulet releases official statements about her disappointments at the Montague’s lies and distortions. And has him castrated. (“Call up Fulbert and find out who he used for Abelard’s, they did a good job and weren’t too expensive if I remember right from the cocktail party where they were talking about it”.)
Or more likely Juliet would have lost her shape after several babies, Romeo would have put on a few himself and started casting wistful eyes at serving women. Romeo would content himself with affairs as he gradually begins dealing more and more with the Montague vineyards and trade interests and the threats from the rising bougeoisie classes, Juliet would get progressively sillier gossiping with her ladies and comfort eating, and they’d soon be middle aged. They’d get furious when their daughter fell in love with a penniless artist or their son wanted to marry the dead Emperor’s illegitimate Sicilian granddaughter instead of the rich Florentine noblewoman they’d picked out, and the now elderly Lady Capulet and the more elderly Lord Montague, though they accept their grandkids and are not too secretly boffing each other, both look on with a “M-hmmm… suddenly the rose doesn’t smell quite the same does it kiddies?”
So it’s lucky for them that died when they did, I guess?
It’s a lot more lucky for Matteo Bandello and William Shakespeare, otherwise they’d have just had a long soap opera.
I dunno, would you want Lady Capulet as your mother-in-law?
I think Shakespeare’s original draft (or Bandello’s, can’t remember) had the line “Lady Capulet… you’re trying to seduce me, aren’t thou?” She was only 28 after all.
The priest seemed to believe the families would reconcile over the marriage. I think it would have been possible.
Romeo was wanted for the murder of Tybalt (Lady Capulet’s nephew, not actually a Capulet himself).
Reading the play, I’ve often thought it was Tybalt and Mercutio who were the hotheads prolonging the vendetta of families they did not belong to. They were using the vendetta as an excuse to be brawling young men.
Shakespeare could have written the Elizabethean version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
What I think is the most damning for their love affair is, as the OP mentioned, Rosaline; Juliet’s a total rebound from an obviously co-dependant clingy teenager. If he hadn’t met Juliet he’d probably be carrying “Meat Be-eth Murder” signs and wearing whatever the Renaissance equivalent of a Che Guevara T-shirt and a copy of The Portable Machiavelli. He’s just a bit of a flakey teenbot.